


Loose Ends

by rosncrntz



Category: Victoria (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Lots of Angst, Songfic, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 07:19:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8480638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosncrntz/pseuds/rosncrntz
Summary: Time has grown very short, and Victoria is anxious that things have been left unsaid, and actions have been left undone. She is not a young woman anymore. Lord Melbourne is growing old. In an attempt to tie up loose ends, she pays a visit to Brocket Hall. Inspired by 'Shiver' by Lucy Rose.





	

_

If we turn back time, could we learn to live right? 

_

Time, which had once harboured a youth never-ending, had become very short. And, as is always the way with the shortening of time, one begins to fumble with loose ends, trying to tie them up. Perhaps afraid of unravelling, we knot them before they get the chance to slip away. It is an instinctual action, done without comprehension, and Victoria discovered the urge come upon herself when the cold September of 1848 began.

Victoria was twenty-nine years of age. She had been eleven years a Queen.

Coming on thirty, mother to six children, four daughters and two sons, she was growing anxious of her dying youth, and all the things she’d never said and never done. She supposed it was natural to feel this way. One cannot expect to live out their days without a few regrets to look back upon. But it gnawed at her, in the night, when Albert tried to sooth her with kind words and gentle kisses. They did not cure her stresses.

She continued living, and wanted to go back.

The mirror showed her a stranger. Her eyes creased at the corners in fine cracks like the outstretched branches of a silver birch tree, bare in winter. Greying came to her lids and under her eyes, and a gradual fading of the skin occurred. What vigorous glow she once had was now sapped, leaving a translucency to her skin which troubled her. She thought herself made of vellum, which would tear upon the slightest contact. Bearing children had torn her apart. Watching them grow had drained her. Hollow.

She had remembered feeling full. Full of something. Youth, life, love, hope, joy. Something that her younger days knew very well, but that she had not truly met for a long while. Albert brought it back to her briefly in his words, his touches, the feel of his lips, his body, but she had not felt completely whole again.

The wholeness of her had left with her first friend. It was as if he had brought her into completion upon his arrival, when she was eighteen years old, and then had taken half of her away again, when she was twenty-three. She had been denying this thought for six years. Six years a married woman. Six years a woman who must, simply must, forget.

Forgetting, although initially painful, had become easier with time, and with more children to distract her, and more miles between them. And she had lived, with only a little hurt.

But, upon turning twenty-nine, and finding the chill of the autumn whipping the windows a little more fiercely than the previous years, she was reminded, strongly, of him – and could not banish him from her mind. Brocket Hall was a flicker in her younger years. The Whigs were a flash, in a time long gone.

Lord Melbourne was a thing lost. She wished to find him again.

She decided she could not announce her arrival, but instead take the carriage down that September morning to Brocket Hall, quite alone, to find him again. She could hardly know whether she would meet the man she once knew, or whether he would have any interest in seeing her, but she felt she could do no else. The strings of time were slipping through her fingers. She was forced into action by something she could hardly understand. Some divine force of nature, pushing her to him, against her better judgement.

She did not tell Albert where she was going. He would misunderstand her.

The carriage did not run smoothly on September roads. Cold had hardened the ground, and each dip and bump jolted the wheels, bending the spokes and throwing the Queen in her seat. She was weary, and the movement made her head throb. Fields stretched far out, melting into a vast sunrise that scorched her eyes and whipped the grass into sparking flames.

It was a bitterly cold morning, despite the sun’s efforts, and Victoria could feel the wind whip her to her bones once the carriage had halted, and she had climbed out. At the mercy of the elements, and swallowed in the shadow of Brocket Hall, she felt trepidation seize her. She could remember the path to the rookery as if she had only walked down it yesterday. The route was rooted in her memory. Footpaths harboured by the burnt leaves of autumn, edges caressed by the oranges, and the yellows, and the deep reds and russets. The brown leaves had made a carpet for her feet, and the wind had made a tunnel for her to follow, and the sunrise had shown her the object of her heart’s dearest desire.

It was as bright today as it had been, and the leaves were beginning to lose their vibrant green, and garner their fiery coats.

Victoria was told that he was sat beneath the rookery, and a servant offered to show her the way. The man was a little startled to meet the Queen – having not prepared for the situation – but tried his best to be of service. Victoria had known she would find him there. And she did not need directions.

The wind was tunnelling for her, offering the clearest path, and the leaves were being carried in his direction, tugging at her heart to follow. Beckoning her to what it missed. To what it missed so dearly. To what it never thought it would see again. To what is longed to see again.

Carried on that wind, cheeks pricked with ice and breath emerging in clouds before her, she practically ran down the path. Shoes kicked leaves and skirt ruffled and breath panted and the Queen was abandoned. Time was growing short. She was forced to hurry.

The hurry ceased in an instant upon seeing him, sat exactly where he had been. She had not seen that face for years, but it was still so viscerally familiar to her. So much so that she felt she had never been apart from it. His coat, a little darker than the green that once cloaked him, hung around the shoulders of her Prime Minister. He would always be that to her. His hair stirred with the breeze. It had a little more grey in it now. Silvery in age. As if his years were rewarded in precious metals being weaved into his hair. He was handsome, now, just as he had been. More so. He was calm.

He must have heard her footfall, as he stirred, turning to her. Perhaps feeling the tugging on the very chambers of his heart. And, walking towards him, he saw the woman that had consumed his every thought for seven long years. She had not changed one bit, and so he recognised her at an instant.

Triggered by instinct, and habit, he rose to his sovereign.

He hardly knew what to say. To say it was an honour was an understatement. To say it was the answer to his prayers was foolish. He was made breathless by her. She always had that effect on him. Without breath in his lungs, he could not utter a word. God, she was just as beautiful as he had remembered. And it hurt him just as much.

Was it a crime, to think of a married woman in such a way as he did? Not just a married woman, but the Queen of England?

“Forgive me, Lord Melbourne,” Victoria sighed, unbound by the exercise but feeling restored by his presence, “but I have been most eager to see you for a while. I should have called ahead, I know.”

“No,” he said, firmly, not wishing for her to explain for a moment longer, “it is truly an honour, Ma’am.”

 _Ma’am._ That was the word spoken to her in her sleep. Whistled by the wind and tapping at the window. To hear him say it was blissful. She wanted to hear it again.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked, still too shocked to even smile at her, let alone voice a word that wasn’t stuttered out of him. Victoria was too distracted to notice Lord Melbourne’s disarray, and she only saw him as the charming man that was once her Prime Minister. She could never see him as anything else and, in comparison, she felt that her confusion must be most embarrassing to him.

She thought. And time passed.

“I am afraid, Lord M, that I am finding it difficult to… voice why it is I am here.”

Lord Melbourne’s brows creased. The Queen looked sad. _So sad._ She had been upset before, many times, in his presence. She had cried in front of him, talked for hours of her stresses, wailed about them, shouted and pleaded with him on more than one occasion, but she had never looked quite this sad.

It was one of the gentler forms that sorrow took, and that was what worried him.

Lord Melbourne had seen sorrow take all the forms with the young Queen. He had seen sorrow become child-like tears. He had seen sorrow become ferocious anger. He had seen sorrow become stress-born headaches. But sorrow had not taken this form with the Queen before, not that he had seen. Her face was empty of any emotion, purged of feeling and uncreased. But her eyes told everything. The blue of them, which was always either steely in royalty, stormy in anger, or vibrant in love, were grey in poignancy. All the tragedy that one would expect from a young Queen, but had never before been present in Victoria, was in her eyes.

“Ma’am?”

There it was again. Victoria noticed something creaking in his voice. It had not creaked like that before.

“How long has it been?” Victoria asked, suddenly, seized by urgency. Lord Melbourne knew exactly how long it had been, but thought it polite to pause before replying,

“Seven years, Ma’am.”

The facts hit her like a blunt force to her stomach. Such a long time to be yearning so. Had he felt it too? Could he hear her voice in the dead of night? Did he ever imagine what they could have shared? Did his mind wander to something forbidden? Did he wish to go back?  
“It is too long to be a Queen,” Victoria exhaled, talking mostly to herself. In fact, she had almost forgotten that Lord Melbourne was in front of her, until he gave a laugh,

“Ma’am, you have hardly begun your reign!”

“I feel I may have been happier if I had never come to the throne.”

“I certainly would not have.”

His flirting got close to amusing her, but failed to, for her mind and heart were heavy. What he took a foolishness, to her was the direst seriousness. It was far too long to be a Queen. She was not made to rule, certainly not for a long time, and the whole thing was becoming tedious and tiring. She could not do it. Not without him, anyway. No. Not without him.

“I have been unhappy, Lord Melbourne.”

Taking on a more sober demeanour, Lord Melbourne moved a little closer to the Queen. His hand itched to touch her. Just to lay a hand on her shoulder, to run a thumb along her collarbone, tracing her bones. It would be a comfort for her, he told himself. He wished to comfort. That was all.

“I am deeply aggrieved to hear that, Ma’am. May I suggest-?”

“Lord Melbourne, if I wanted someone to advise to me, I would have sought out an advisor,” she interjected, impatiently. It was rude of her, but she did not want to hear his civilities. It was not the civilities she had missed. She could get civilities from any other person in the palace. “I have many of those, I assure you.”

“I am an advisor, Ma’am.”

Victoria half-sighed, half-laughed, and, shaking her head, replied,

“You have never been just that, Lord M. You know that.”

His breath hitched in his throat.

“I have been unhappy, Lord M, as I have been thinking… no, I have been consumed with thoughts of the past.” Victoria could see Lord Melbourne’s face morphing into that of confusion. “I am being hasty, but time compels me to speak, and so I will be direct. I have wanted answers to questions for years. And I must ask you, Lord Melbourne. If we could go back, back to that morning, right here, would you change your mind?”

Lord Melbourne remembered that morning vividly: the scene was scorched into him, branded with metal, hot and harsh. He could recall every word that passed between them. And he regretted every single moment of it. He could not think of it without his heart threatening to break. The ache was too painful to bear. And, now, in front of her, he felt his whole frame would fracture.

“Ma’am, you cannot ask me something like that,” he said, voice low but hard.

“I will not arrest you, Lord M! I must know.”

“You are a married woman, Ma’am. You are the Queen.”

“And we are alone.” The wind picked her words from her lips and carried them on the backs of leaves, to be received by no other ear than his. They were alone, that was certain. Lord Melbourne could say whatever he so wished. He could tell her how much he had always loved. He could tell her of the way his heart swelled when he looked upon her. He could tell her of the miserable days he had spent these past seven years, bereft of her most dear company. He could confess his most private desires. He could taste her lips. He could learn the map of her body. And no one would know. “Tell me, Lord Melbourne, would you have me, if we could turn back time?” she repeated. Time was short. She must know.

His eyes, tired and old, but still that same colour – the colour of the dying daylight passing through the summer’s leaves and a glass of brandy – looked down into hers. They seemed to look straight through her pupils, and into the very depths of her. They exposed her to him.

“Yes.”

_“Yes?”_

“I have always wished that I could have accepted you. I have always looked back with regret. I always will.” Victoria had sought closure in an answer from him, but he was tearing each wound open, stitch by stitch until all her sores were red and bleeding. “But we all have the live with the choices we make, don’t we? No matter how hard.” Melbourne's voice ended in barely a whisper. His throat clenched. He thought he would choke.

How close she was to becoming Mrs Melbourne. How very close. Only the smallest instant, a moment in time, and everything could have been different.

_Would she have been happier? Being married to him?_

Melbourne wanted to kiss her. He could lean down, in that very moment, and take her face in his old hands, stroke her cheek gently, and place all his love on her lips. He could alleviate regret and abandon reserve and indulge fantasy. He could simply give in. To give in now would be the purest relief. To allow himself this would be all he needed.

But he did not. In doing so, he would condemn them both to purgatory. They could not confess anything. They could not act. They could not touch.

Because it would only leave them wanting more.

And so they parted.

**Author's Note:**

> A little one shot because I wanted to indulge myself in something super angsty! There are a couple more one shots on the way, one which is kind of half-angst and the other which is very fluffy and lovely, so don't worry! Thank you for reading, as always, and comments are always appreciated!


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